When I have mod points, I have started reading un-threaded at 0, with newest posts first. Reading newest first seems like the most important. I generally try to use up my points quickly but thoughtfully. If I start at the top (ie. oldest posts first), I usually see a few posts deserving some points before I even get half way through a topic that already has 100 or so posts. Starting at the other end gives you a chance to get to some of the fresh stuff that could still have an impact on the discussion if it becomes visible soon enough.

This morning, when I went to print out my dvi file over my home network to my stupid winprinter, doomed to be forever connected to my trusty Win95 print server, suddenly nothing worked.

WTF? I said to myself, and proceeded to try to figure out why half of the network functions out of that box suddenly quit working. About 25 reboots later, which means telling Win95 at least 100 times that I do want to keep those newer versions of secur32.dll and netbios.vdx, I finally got everything back up again. I had just forgotten how damn painful this is...

I'm starting to lose faith in the moderators. (Everyone will say: you must be new around here!)

But yes, it's true. I submitted a post that said exactly this: "Red Hat is a Vendor, for example". That's it. I even had to wait a few seconds because I typed it so fast the lameness filter got pissed off at me.

I posted without karma bonus, but was modded up four times to, get this, +5 Informative !

What a scoop!

I think my anti-war sig is costing me karma!

Here it is, in case I ever change:

Congratulations! Now we're the Evil Empire

(Please note the lack of closing punctuation. It's my fault and I haven't gone back to fix it.)

Of course, this sig could also be earning karma for me, too. No way to discriminate between the brilliance of my comments and moderator political sympathies as causes for any modding up that happens. But there seem to be a few times where the sig could be the only reason I'm being modded down.

Call me paranoid...

OK: "paranoid".

There.

It seems easier to post to /. than to other forums that don't have comparable moderation systems, because one does not worry so much about sounding stupid. Anything you say that is not really interesting just disappears, as long as it isn't inflammatory, troll etc.

As far as I am concerned, this is a good thing, since it encourages participation.

Initial observation about moderation on /. :

If your posts start at only +1, it seems difficult to get to +2. Once there, however, one gets fairly easily to higher scores.

Conclusion (temporary) : the moderators are really still mostly reading already moderated posts. Maybe there should be a moderation display mode where the moderators only see posts below a certain threshold.

Sorry, just talking to myself.